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By Jacob Stockinger

BOO!!

But this time it’s all treat and no trick!

This month’s FREE concert in the new midday series of Just Bach (below, in a photo by John W. Barker) falls on Wednesday – that is, on Halloween!

In keeping with the spooky holiday, this week’s Just Bach concert will feature one of the traditional pieces of classical music used on Halloween: the mighty and well-known Toccata and Fugue in D minor for organ. (You can see an abstract and fascinating animated graphic depiction of the work in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

The FREE concert runs from 1 to 2 p.m. at Luther Memorial Church (below) at 1021 University Avenue. The audience is permitted to eat lunch and drink refreshments during the midday concert.

Two other works are on the program.

One is the Suite No. 5 in C minor for solo cello, played by James Waldo (below). A discerning friend of The Ear heard Waldo play a different solo cello suite at a concert last month by the Madison Bach Musicians, and said it was probably the finest interpretation he had ever heard. And he has heard a lot of them.

The last work will be the Cantata No. 163 “Nur Jedem das Seine,” or “To Each His Own,” with singers and instrumentalists performing on period instruments with historically informed performance practices.

Marika Fischer Hoyt is becoming ever more ubiquitous, not only as a performing violist in orchestral, string quartet and period-instrument ensembles, but also as organizer of musical activities, especially as devoted to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (below).

Hoyt (below) has already revived the annual “Bach around the Clock” spectacular each spring to mark Bach’s birthday, but now she has established a monthly series of FREE midday concerts at Luther Memorial Church called “Just Bach.”

The first of this series was held last Thursday afternoon, Sept. 27, at 1 p.m. in the church sanctuary at 1021 University Avenue. Ten musicians participated.

The players were Kangwon Lee Kim and Leanne League, violins; Fischer Hoyt, viola; James Waldo, cello; and Luke Conklin, oboe. All played on period instruments, with Mark Brampton Smith playing the organ.

Both set the type of Pietistic Lutheran German texts standard for such church compositions of the day, and each built around pairs of arias and recitatives for different solo singers.

BWV 32, which adds an oboist (below, second from right) to the string players in some of the movements, is particularly interesting in representing a series of exchanges between the Soul (Seele) and Jesus Himself, culminating in direct duos between them.

Each cantata ends with a harmonization of a traditional Lutheran chorale. In the spirit of the program’s venue, the audience was asked to sing them, in German, from prepared sheets. In these, and in an English hymn from this church’s hymnal, the audience was prepped by Brailey, who served as general hostess.

In purely musical terms, the performances were really excellent, with both vocalists and instrumental players of established talents. And certainly the very atmosphere of a church setting evoked the composer’s original purposes. (The church’s ample acoustics enriched the musical performances, though they badly undermined spoken material on the microphone.)

Previously, the Madison Bach Musicians has been a rare group giving us specimens of the generally neglected cantatas, but now this “Just Bach” series will augment the works’ availability.

Subsequent concerts in this series will be switched to 1 p.m. on WEDNESDAY afternoons on Oct. 31, Nov. 28 and Dec. 12.

For more background, including the addresses of Facebook and Instagram sites of “Just Bach,” go to:

But prospective attendees should be warned of practical problems. The early afternoon time is difficult for most people, there is no parking facility, and access to the venue will likely be limited to those already in the vicinity.

For all that, I reckoned some 40 or so people in the audience – with no one eating lunch, even thought that is permitted. So artistic merits might still surmount obstacles.

The Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (below, in a photo by Steve Rankin), founded and led by Mikko Rankin Utevsky is celebrating its fourth season of summer training sessions and public concerts.

I had to miss the first one of this summer, back in June, but I caught up with their second one, on last Saturday night, given at the First United Methodist Church on Wisconsin Avenue.

The church is now pursuing an active program of concerts, and this was the first one I have attended there. The hall (below) is a beautiful and spacious one, with fine acoustics. The fifty-odd people who attended were all but dwarfed by its amplitude.

The first half of the program was devoted to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat, K. 271, often known by the name “Jeunehomme” for the student who inspired it. It is a boldly innovative work, even as it is the composer’s first truly mature essay in this form.

The soloist was Trevor Stephenson (below top and left in bottom photo), artistic director of the Madison Bach Musicians, playing his own fortepiano.

That instrument lacks the big and forceful sound of the modern grand piano, and Stephenson rightly shunned heroics for greater delicacy. Even with an orchestra of only 16 players, the instrument defined a balance that was fascinatingly different from what we usually hear. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the Mozart concerto played on a fortepiano by Malcolm Bilson, who was Trevor Stephenson’s teacher.)

After the intermission, Utevsky identified a policy now established by the organization, one that allows certain players in the orchestra to become podium “interns”, for training and for one performance opportunity.

This time cellist Elizabeth Strauss (below) was given a chance to conduct the familiar string arrangement that Edvard Grieg made of his song Våren (usually translated as “The Last Spring”).

Strauss seemed very confident. I did find her tempo a little faster than seems good to me, and a string group of only a dozen players could hardly achieve the polish and richness that most performances bring off. Still, the point is the wonderful experience given to such a trainee-conductor in these circumstances.

The concert concluded as Utevsky conducted the recast orchestra (below) in the suite for 13 instruments that Aaron Copland derived from his ballet Appalachian Spring.

This is a beautiful piece of Americana in music, and both conductor and players gave it their full devotion. The result was a handsomely well-balanced and nicely blended performance that obviously moved the audience greatly.

The MAYCO organization has made a real place for itself in Madison’s summer music, giving valuable experience to both the conductor and his student players, as they grow into mature orchestral musicians.

ALERT: On this Friday night at 7 p.m. in Grace Episcopal Church, 116 West Washington Avenue, on the Capitol Square, Grace Presents is offering a FREE organ recital by Jackson Borges of Delaware. Sorry, no word on composers or pieces.

The Madison Youth Viol Consort (MYVC) is the brain child of Eric Miller (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot) and is a part of the Viola da Gamba Society of America’s nationwide Consort Loan Program.

The mission of the MYVC is two-fold: 1. To introduce the viola da gamba, its repertoire and historically informed playing techniques to young musicians in Madison, grades 8-12 through an artistic chamber music experience; and 2. To increase community awareness in Madison of the Viola da Gamba and its repertoire.

The MYVC currently has five instruments on loan: two bass viols, a tenor viol, and two treble viols. Current members are all accomplished student musicians in grades 8-12 from the Madison area: Charles Deck, Mateo Guaio, Nathaniel Johnson, Anika Olson, and Miriam Syvertsen.

The MYVC will be performing two pieces from the English consort song tradition along with WBE’s vocalists, Consuelo Sanudo and Mimmi Fulmer. “Come to me, grief, for ever” by William Byrd, and “The Silver Swan” by Orlando Gibbons.

As for the WBE, they say: “Playing on period instruments from original notation, the Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble brings the sound and character of the 17th and 18th centuries to life, often shedding light upon lesser known compositions and composers.”

ALERT 1: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features violinist Wendy Adams and pianist Ann Aschbacher in music by Schubert, Brahms and Hovhaness.

ALERT 2: The amateur Madison Community Symphony Orchestra will perform a FREE concert Friday night at 7:30 p.m. in the Norman Mitty Theater, 1701 Wright Street on the Madison Area Technical College campus on the east side. The all-Russian program, under the baton of Blake Walter of Edgewood College, features works by Glazunov, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Balakirev. For more information and the complete program, go to: http://www.madisoncommunityorchestra.org/pages/concerts.htm

By Jacob Stockinger

The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (below top), under music director Andrew Sewell (below bottom), always puts together memorable programs, often with new and exciting soloists plus neglected or little known repertoire.

That is once again the promise of the WCO concert this Friday night at 7:30 p.m. in the Capitol Theater of the Overture Center, 201 State St.

Tickets are $15-$80. See below.

First, the program offers the Madison debut of Alexandre Dossin (below), the 2003 winner of the Martha Argerich International Piano Competition.

Trained at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, Dossin seems a power player. Little wonder that he has recorded music by Liszt, Prokofiev, Kabalevsky and Leonard Bernstein for Naxos Records as well as by Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky for G. Schirmer Music. You can also hear and see a lot of his performances on YouTube.

Moreover, Dossin, who has taught at the UW-Eau Claire and the University of Louisiana and who now teaches at the University of Oregon, will be playing a relatively neglected masterpiece of American Romantic music: the Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 23, by Edward MacDowell (below).

MacDowell’s work is a dark, dramatic and virtuosic work that was once championed by Van Cliburn. (You can hear Cliburn with the third movement with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the late Walter Hendl in the YouTube video at the bottom.).

Too often modern instrument groups defer to period-instrument ensembles for Bach – which means that audiences don’t hear as much Bach (below) as they should and as previous generations did, as the prize-winning composer John Harbison has often lamented in public.

Of course, it is safe to bet that the WCO will borrow some of the faster tempi and historically informed performance techniques from the early music movement. Still, The Ear says Bravo to the programming of Bach by a group that uses modern instruments. We can always use more Bach.

The symphony by Robert Schumann (below) will also have an unusual, if subtle, aspect to its performance.

It is usually played by larger symphony orchestras. But using a chamber orchestra creates a certain intimacy and lends a transparency that reveals structure and themes in an engaging way. Yannick Nézet-Séguin – the highly acclaimed music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and music director-designate of the Metropolitan Opera — recently proved that with his outstanding recording of the four symphonies by Robert Schumann (below) with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

No matter how you answer, it is just about certain that you will find it at this Saturday’s marathon Bach Around the Clock 5, which is even more impressive this year than last year, which was plenty successful.

BATC 5 is a community birthday celebration of the life and music of Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach (below) – for many, The Big Bang of classical music — who turns 333 this month.

BATC 5 will take place this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (below) at 1833 Regent Street, on Madison’s near west side.

NOTE: If you can’t make it in person, the entire event will be streamed live, as it was last year, from the church via a link on the BATC web page.

For all 12 hours, BATC 5 is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Those who attend are also encouraged to be informal in dress and behavior – to come in and listen, then leave and came back again – in short, to wander in and out as they want to or need to.

To The Ear, the event has been improved in just about every way you can think of.

Do you like to hear professional performers? Amateurs? Students? You will find lots of all of them. (Below are the Sonora Suzuki Strings of Madison.)

Do you like your Bach on period instruments, such as the harpsichord and the recorder, using historically informed performance practices? BATC 5 has that.

Do you like your Bach on modern instruments like the piano? BATC has that too. (Below is Tim Adrianson of Madison who will play the Partita No. 5 in G Major this year.)

Do you like more familiar works? There will be the Harpsichord Concerto No. 1 in D minor, the Concerto for Two Violins and the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. (Last year saw Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 5, and BATC director Marika Fischer Hoyt says her plans call for the one-day festival to work its way through all six Brandenburgs before repeating any.) You can hear the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in the YouTube video at the bottom.

Do you like less familiar works to expand your horizon? There will be lots of those too.

Do you prefer Bach’s vocal and choral writing? BATC has lots of it, including the famous Cantata No. 140 (“Wachet auf”) performed by UW baritone Paul Rowe (below, in a photo by Michael R. Anderson) and his students from the UW’s Mead Witter School of Music, plus two solo cantatas. The Wisconsin Chamber Choir will also sing.

Do you prefer Bach’s instrumental music? BATC has that in abundance, from solo pieces like a Cello Suite to chamber music such as an Organ Trio Sonata and larger ensembles.

Do you like the original versions? No problem. BATC has them.

Do you like novel or modern arrangements and transcriptions of Bach’s universal music? BATC has them too.

Concerned about how long the event is?

You might want to bring along a cushion to soften a long sit on hard pews.

Plus, there is more food and more refreshments this year, thanks to donations from Classen’s Bakery, HyVee, Trader Joe’s and the Willy Street Co-op.

There are more performers, up from 80 last year to about 200. And they include a pianist who is the official Guest Artist Lawrence Quinnett (below) and is coming all the way from North Carolina, where he teaches at a college, to perform two half-hour segments of Preludes and Fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II.

But familiar faces and voices from the UW-Madison and other groups in the Madison area will also be returning to perform.

Also new this year is a back-up group for concertos and accompaniment.

Some features have been carried over, including mini-interviews with performers conducted by hosts, including Stephanie Elkins (below top) of Wisconsin Public Radio and Marika Fischer Hoyt herself (below bottom, with flutist Casey Oelkers, on the left, who works for the Madison Symphony Orchestra)

But The Ear is also impressed by how little repetition in repertoire there is from last year. So far, each year feels pretty much new and different, and the newly designated non-profit organization, with its newly formed board of directors, is working hard to keep it that way.

What more is there to say?

Only that you and all lovers of classical music should be there are some point – or even more than one.

Here is a link to the BATC general web site, with lots of information including how to support this community event — which, for the sake of full disclosure, The Ear does:

The Madison Bach Musicians will perform their seventh annual Baroque Holiday Concert (below, in a 2014 photo by Kent Sweitzer) this Saturday night at 8 p.m. in the First Congregational United Church of Christ, 1609 University Avenue, across from Camp Randall stadium.

The concert will be preceded at 7:15 p.m. by a lecture by MBM founder and director Trevor Stephenson (below), who will talk about period instruments, the pieces and composers on the program, and historically informed performance practices.

The seasonal program features works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi.

They will be joined by UW-Madison oboist Aaron Hill (below bottom) and a baroque string ensemble in Bach’s lyrical masterpiece Cantata BWV 32 Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen (Dearest Jesus, My Desiring). A aria and a song by Bach will also be performed.

Also on the program is the rarely performed but electrifying chamber cantata or motet “In Furore iustissimae irae,” RV 626, by Vivaldi. (You can hear it in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

The concert will open with the Concerto Grosso in F Major, Op. 6, No. 12, by Arcangelo Corelli.

The concert will conclude with MBM concertmaster Kangwon Kim as the featured violin soloist in the Winter section from Vivaldi’s popular Four Seasons.

Advance-sale discount tickets are $30 for general admission and are available at Orange Tree Imports and the Willy Street Co-op (East and West).

Here, as elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world, the period instrument movement has become more and more mainstream over the years.

The instruments and the historically informed performance practices have expanded.

The repertoire has also grown, extending both back to Medieval and early Baroque music and forward to the Classical, Romantic and even more modern periods.

Historical research into early music, along with performances and recordings, has influenced even modern music groups such as the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, which now sound lighter, clearer and faster when they play Handel operas, Bach concertos and Beethoven symphonies.

Twenty years ago, the Madison Bach Musicians did not exist. Neither did the Madison Early Music Festival or the fully developed early music program at the UW-Madison.

But the Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble (below) was there, having grown out of other period instrument ensembles and performers who pioneered the long-lived and now very successful early music revival.

And the WBE, with changes in personnel, continues strong.

This coming Sunday you can help celebrate the ensemble’s 20th anniversary by attending a concert of mixed baroque chamber music.

The concert is on this Sunday, Nov. 26, at 2 p.m. in Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church (below), at 1833 Regent Street on Madison’s near west side. (The Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble will also perform the same program in Milwaukee this Friday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Charles Allis Museum. See the WBE website, below, for details)

In an original program that is organized much like the music it features, the early music group Madison Bach Musicians (below) will open their new season this weekend with a concert that offers a counterpoint of music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi — all done with period instrument and historically informed performance practices.

The two concerts are:

This coming Saturday night, Sept. 23, with a 6:45 p.m. pre-concert lecture by MBM founder, artistic director and keyboardist Trevor Stephenson (below), and a 7:30 p.m. concert at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive in Madison.

The guest soloist is Steuart Pincombe (below, in a photo by Ryan West), who plays the baroque cello. He will join the Madison Bach Musicians for this innovative concert – an dual exploration of fugues and imitation from the German Bach and the Italian Vivaldi — two masters of the Baroque.

The concert itself is structured much like a fugue. Starting from a single voice, selections alternate between pieces by Vivaldi (below top) and by Bach (below bottom) ―with each new section of the concert requiring an additional performer. (Sorry, no word on specific works except for the finale.)

The program culminates with the entire ensemble performing Vivaldi’s D minor Concerto Grosso alongside a string arrangement of Bach’s own transcription of the same piece. (You can hear the original by Vivaldi in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

Advance-sale discount tickets cost $30 for general admission and at available at Orange Tree Imports and Willy Street Co-op, East and West.